DRM free. On a site with an RSS feed where you can subscribe to updates. With a possibility to write comments on the stories. They’re playing around with some classic Web 2.0 features here. I haven’t had the time to listen to the stories, but if they hold the same level of quality that the BMW films did then they might have a winner here.

Anyway, it is a new way of marketing. And a part of a marketing budget that just slipped away from traditional media.

Date
7 to 10 June 2006 , including arrival and departure. The conference dates are June 8 and 9.

Language
English and French

My session will be at 11:15 thursday 8.

From the programme:

How will portable media players, mobile phones, broadband and media centers change the way we use media? Some devices are alreday way beyond the phase of being “technical gadgets for the geeks”. New markets have developed. Still, it’s interesting to have a look at what the advanced users are doing and outline some of the biggest challenges for the broadcasters. Mr. Solheim will present his thoughts without boring bullet points, advanced tables and difficult charts. Welcome to a peek into the future that is right here now.

Chapter 3 of my presentation from the Nordic Media Festival. You find the articles I have produced so far from this presentation here.

Some history

Six years ago I made some slides for a presentation at a big media conference in Stockholm. I suggested that we should have a look at how TV is distributed and take a closer look at the business model. Could new technologies change that model? To illustrate my point I made a comparison with the software industry.

This is how the business model worked when I bought my first license of Photoshop back in 1994. Adobe makes the software. They pack it and send it to the distributor in Norway called Office Line, they sell it to the shops where I buy my box of software. Illustrated by one of the biggest electronics retailers in Norway, ElkjÃ¸p.

For the last couple of years, that model has changed. I buy Photoshop directly from Adobe in the US. The product is delivered trough the net as a download. Both the distributor and the retailer are obsolete (for that kind of product).

This is an example of how the popular show called Friends was distributed in Norway. Warner makes it, the television channel TV2 buys rights and distribute trough cable, terrestial and satellite. Could something disturb this model?

More history – Bob the millionaire

One year ago I made a little comic strip to illustrate how horribly wrong the television industry was trying to deal with the problem of illegal downloads and the fact that the internet started to act as a reliable and high quality distribution model for their content. I include the story in my presentation, but here it is much easier that you simply have a look at the original post.

Okay. So what’s the solution to this problem? Availability. Make content available on the platforms that people use. And now, one year later the industry slowly understand this.

What added urgency to getting
Innertube deployed, CBS said, was
that CBS SportsLineâ€™s March Madness
was such a success, drawing five million
viewers and sending out 25 million
streams. It was, they said, the
largest live sports event ever on the
Net.

The day after March Madness
ended, CBS executives said, the phone
started ringing off the hook.
Advertisers had been so thrilled with
the results that they were looking for
more Internet entertainment videos.

But hey. The role that Comcast have as a broadband provider is very different from the role they have as a cable provider. The cable providers have valuable control of the content they deliver. They make the packages, they control the equipment. The encryption. They have the customer relationship. They decide what channels are going into the different packages.

As a broadband company the control has shifted entirely to the user and the content provider. Big difference. New rules. Of course they don’t like it. They try to make bottle necks. They try to limit certain kinds of traffic. It will be interesting to watch this space during the next couple of years.

The broadcaster’s nightmare

The day Warner find a way to earn more money distributing the content directly to you they will do that. Rendering the broadcaster and the traditional cable companies obsolete. Bad news for some television companies that lives entirely of content they buy, package and distribute.

Seriously bad news.

Yes. We still need the broadcaster to reach a big audience. We still need them to get attention to new content. We still need them because the risk capital often lies in the broadcaster. The production company wouldn’t even start producing without a broadcaster. But all of this can change. You won’t see huge amounts of broadcasters die tomorrow, but during the next couple of years some business models and traditional thinking have to be revised.

What’s next

It’s not about distribution. It’s about getting attention. In my next chapter from this presentation I will tell you why we don’t need the broadcasters to get that attention. I will point back to this post about the new face of marketing and commercials and give you a couple of thoughts on the future of the 30 second television ad.

If you are an oystercatcher and decides to place your nest on top of the science building of the university of Bergen you are up for some fame. A pair of oystercachers has decided that this is a good idea. They have been there several years and the very scientific people at the university distributed the hatching through a web cam last year. New this year is high quality live video streaming.

Due to the very long days during the Norwegian summer you will get quite nice shots even late evenings and early mornings. The picture in this article is from 10:42 PM.

The students and the people working at the university are serious about this, so both the webcam snapshot quality and the video streaming are of very high quality.

The eggs are estimated to hatch in the end of May / beginning of June. You’ll have to be there frequently because the kids leave their nest after a couple of days.

Link to the main page with web cam and instructions for the live streaming (english).

The norwegian website Propaganda has an article out (norwegian) on how commercials now can be distributed through the net and can reach millions of people without the need of televison stations or cable companies. I used the fantastic Volkswagen commercials featuring Peter Stormare to illustrate this fact in my presentation at the Nordic Media Festival, and Propaganda asked me some questions. They have summarized the issues nicely in their article, but I have a couple of points to add…

Last year I posted a short article on the BMW commercial featuring Kermit the frog. A friend of mine, John Andreas Andersen was the cinematographer and I posted a couple of details from the production. At that point John Andreas had a very cool “making of” movie on his web site, but had to take it down after a cease and desist from Disney. Owners of everything regarding the little green celebrity frog.

Ever since, the search “BMW kermit” has been one of the most frequent searches that drives traffic from Google to my blog.

People have a genuine interest for this commercial. They miss the behind the scenes movie and want to know more. BMW hasn’t done anything about this fact. They have a huge audience that want their commercial. Seems like a dream for any marketer.

The making of is up on YouTube (at least at the time of writing this).

BMW had a huge success with BMW Films. A true example of how it is possible to reach out with commercials that people really want. The movies was made for distribution through the internet. They were so popular that they ended up screening them at cinemas in the US and selling a DVD with a collection of all the movies.

What happened to the Kermit spot? Why didn’t they buy the rights to the “making of”? Why is there no information about this spot on bmw.com? What should they have done?

Do like Sony

Their beautiful Bravia advert has been debated and praised by highly trafficed web sites. There is a big interest in the commercial and Sony has done something to meet this interest. They have put up www.bravia-advert.com. A web site with one mission, information and downloads regarding this particular ad. A look at the traffic rank for this site on Alexa reveals that making this site probably has paid off hugely.

I have never seen this commercial on regular TV. Still I know everything about it and have seen it several times on the net. Right now it has 3,4 million views alone on YouTube.

Welcome to a new world of distribution, marketing and the art of getting attention… More on this when I reach that chapter in my series of articles from my presentation at the Nordic Media Festival.

People have been talking about the convergence of devices for a long time. And if everything is melting together into one universal device this sounds like something that will be very easy to handle. Problem is that this is not the case. The convergence leads to an abundance of devices that can be used to recieve rich media like video and sound. The computer is turning into a video recorder. The mobile phone is turning into a media device. The TV is turning into a computer. And so on.

This leads to huge amounts of new user situations. Broadcasters have to face the fact that people will watch their program in new settings. At work. On the go. At new times. In a foreign country. At their hotel room. While travelling.

And then you have these young people that are able to do several things simultaneously. They surf the web while watching the TV. And I must admit that the illustration here is kind of old school. I have a remote in my hand in the picture. It should have been my Nokia. A browser, the TV, messenger, skype and the mobile for sending and recieving SMS. All at the same time.

The broadcast industry should start taking this serious. Do tests with synchronized interactivity on the net during a television program. Behind the scenes. Extra information. I must admit it. On several occations I have used IMDB during a movie to find extra information. Now start exploring this possibility.

And, did anyone question my headline “…that makes things difficult“? I hear that way too often. How on earth could hundreds of new devices for playing content make problems? For the broadcaster that has any tiny bit of foresight this is no problem. This is one huge possibility. The surface where you can show your content just quadroupled.

It’s like an airliner that suddenly got huge amounts of new planes, helicopters and space shuttles for free. Not difficult. Not a problem. Slightly challenging, but loads of fun and opportunities.

What’s next?
In the next chapter from my presentation we will revisit my one year old cartoon about Bob the Millionaire and have a look at what the industry has done to meet that absurd situation.